to prove them; just as I disbelieve others, without being able to disprove them. What side I take is determined not strictly by logic, but by preponderance.
It must, I imagine, be the immutability in Nature’s laws which creates the majority of deists, and more especially among men of thought and intellect. The more we familiarize ourselves with these laws, the more probable it becomes that things have never gone on otherwise in the world than as they are going on now, and that miracles have at no time ever taken place there, any more than they do now. That whole generations should be imposed upon, to say nothing of single individuals ; that, influenced by a thousand and one interests, men should lightly give their belief; nay, that it may even be a pleasure to believe in a thing which we have never verified there is nothing extraordinary in this ; we have daily examples of it. But that there should be an eclipse of the sun when the moon is at the full, that water can be changed into wine, and the like, is inconceivable.
Whoever cares to refer to the history of philosophy, both natural and speculative, will find that the greatest discoveries have been made by men who treated as no more than probable what others had advanced as positive fact. Such men might be described as partisans of the new Academy—a school holding the mean between the absolute trustfulness of the Stoic and the uncertainty and
